


Innisfree

by live_laugh_read



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 21:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17169836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/live_laugh_read/pseuds/live_laugh_read
Summary: Claire's path becomes one upon which Jamie cannot follow.





	1. The Gates of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Shifting perspectives, as in the books by Diana Gabaldon. These are not labelled.

I had often thought about what it might be like to die on one’s own terms. The times I had come close to death – Faith’s birth, my fever on the Ridge, being shot in the Battle of Monmouth – had all been instigated without my consent.

 

But now, lying in my own bed on the Ridge, so weak that I could not lift my torso, I thought for the first time that I might finally be getting the death I wanted: dignified, peaceful, and not alone.

 

Jamie would proverbially kill me if he knew what was going through my mind, of course. Seated in a wicker chair to my left, he bore all the signs of fatigue and grief, knowing that he was soon to lose me. I doubted he had slept since the onset of what was likely to be my last illness.

 

Outside, the sun rose, its rays poking over the horizon, bathing the Ridge and all below in a golden glow. There was a stab at my heart as I realised that I wanted to see it once more, whilst that experience still lay open to me.

 

There was movement, and I felt a warm, familiar hand smoothing the hair back from my forehead. Jamie must have seen my face and understood my desire to look upon our small world one more time, before my eyes closed for ever.

 

Without a word, he tucked his faded plaid around me like a blanket, sliding one arm underneath my shoulders and hooking the other behind my legs, lifting me as easily as if I weighed less than a new-born baby. Habit led me to tuck my head into the hollow above his collarbone, feeling against my shoulder the steady beat of his heart.

 

Would that heart fail, I wondered, once mine had? For so many years, it had beat solely for the purpose of mobilising Jamie’s body to protect me and mine. Without a purpose, would it simply cease altogether?

 

I blinked; Jamie had stepped out of the front door, and the fierce intensity of a rising winter sun washed over my body with sudden warmth. Fraser’s Ridge was green after last night’s heavy rainfall, the creek running fast, far below. Not a single cloud lingered in the sky above, more azure than I remembered it being.

 

But then again, I had been confined to the indoors for several days.

 

Jamie sat down on the step, arranging me so I sat in his lap, still wrapped in his faded Fraser plaid, my head now against his shoulder. I reached out and fingered the loose threads at one edge of the plaid, remembering how it had dazzled me so on our wedding day, seeing my bridegroom in full Highland regalia.

 

“You should get a new plaid,” I murmured, throat scratchy from disuse. “I’m not going to be needing new clothes myself anymore.”

 

His arm tightened about my waist, and I heard him swallow. “Why, Sassenach, are ye going to repair the ones ye have yourself?” It was a poor attempt at a joke, trying to ignore the painful reality that I wasn’t long for this world.

 

“I wonder if the seamstress below has Fraser red – or as close as you can get.” When he didn’t answer, I lifted my head to look first at our surroundings, and then at him: his auburn hair, long since faded to silver, his catlike blue eyes, the small lift at the corner of his mouth. “I had a dream last night, Jamie.” My hand reached out of the plaid to lightly brush his jaw. “I was standing on Craigh na Dun, but instead of the buzzing, everything was quiet. Then I heard the voice of Geillis Duncan, saying, ‘ _The gates of heaven are opening, Claire_.’”

 

I paused, watching as Jamie’s lips thinned, the emotion in his eyes betraying the war within himself. “Then the stones began to glow, and I knew I needed to go through them one more time, but that this time, it was not Earth – of any age – that lay beyond, but Heaven.”

 

“Did ye consider it?” His voice was very low.

 

“I knew I would have to, sooner or later, but I wanted to see one more day through with you, Jamie. God knows it’s not enough, but it’s as much as I can ask for.”

 

A tear slipped down one cheek, unbidden, as he held my gaze, unblinking. “Ye must think me a selfish man, Sassenach, for telling ye that twenty years more would not be enough.”

 

Not waiting for my reply, he shifted me so that I was curled against him, small and compact beside his tall frame, my head again resting on his shoulder. “What happens, I wonder?” I asked, on impulse. “I was born on October the twentieth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighteen, and it looks as though I will die in January seventeen-ninety.”

 

“We had best hope and pray that your younger self doesn’t find your gravestone, Sassenach.” There was a joke somewhere in that sentence, but Jamie’s grave tone belied it. “It’s half a world away, so we ought to be safe.”

 

Suddenly, I wondered if Frank would find the record of my death. _Claire Elizabeth Fraser, born October 20 1921, died…_ I couldn’t finish the sentence. In my mind’s eye, the incomplete death certificate hovered, an omen to my impending death.

 

“ _’I will arise, and go now_ ,” I murmured on impulse, tucking my nose against the curve of his skin where neck met shoulder, “ _and go to Innisfree / and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made_.’”


	2. Craigh na Dun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _...in her dreams, she stood once more before the stones at Craigh na Dun..._

 

Snow fell that night, pure and white, coming just after sunset. Dinner had been eaten by candlelight an hour past, with the family, and now Claire lay again in their bed upstairs. She was sleeping, curled on her side, white hair fanning across the pillow; the snow outside, as always, was a pale imitation.

 

Jamie found himself restless, getting up time and again from his chair beside the bed to stoke the fire or find some other way of occupying himself. Normally, he would let the fire burn out, before banking it and going to sleep, but between the snowfall and Claire’s illness, he needed to keep the room warm.

 

Resting on the mantelpiece, his weight on his right hand – the hand Claire had repaired, time and again – he watched her. Her eyes, still the same whisky-brown they had been forty-seven years ago, were closed, and he concentrated on the steady rise and fall of her chest that told him she breathed still.

 

The void was fast approaching, the time coming when he would have to live without her, this time for good. There could be no take-backs, no returns like when she had come back through the stones twenty years after Culloden. He tried to dispel the terrifying thought that tomorrow night he could be sleeping alone, and turned once more to poke grimly at the fire.

 

There was a soft knock at the door, and he called, “Come,” not saying more for fear of waking Claire. When it opened to reveal his daughter, he knew she was coming to say one last goodbye to her mother. “She’s sleeping,” he said gruffly, motioning to the bed.

 

Brianna nodded her thanks, crossing the room to kneel beside Claire. Her hair glowed red-gold in the firelight, the hair that was her inheritance from him, and not for the first time he wished she had more of Claire in her, so that his wife might leave behind a greater legacy.

 

“Mama, it’s me,” Brianna whispered. “I know you mightn’t hear me, but I wanted –“ she choked, and Jamie had to stop himself from going to her. Hard as it might be, he had to let Brianna do this on her own. “I wanted to tell you I love you, before you go. Thank you, for everything that you’ve done for me.”

 

Claire did not reply, but Jamie swore he saw her fingers tighten around Brianna’s in silent acknowledgement. Somewhere in the depths of her dreams, she had heard their daughter.

 

Then the tears came: Brianna’s shoulders and back bowed under the weight of pre-emptive grief, and Jamie crossed the room to take her in his arms. She collapsed against him, her tears soaking his shirt, her arms clutched about his neck like a vise. It was plain to him what she was saying with her actions.

 

_Stay with me, Da. Don’t go with Mama yet._

He rubbed her back soothingly – or at least, what he hoped was soothingly – and murmured to her in the _Gàidhlig_. “Don’t worry, lass. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

 

Eventually her tears ceased, and she looked up at him, bright-eyed and spent. “Tha mi gad gràdh, athair,” she whispered, touching his face with her hand, his native language coming easily to her.

 

They separated after some time, Brianna bending down to press a final kiss to her mother’s temple and tuck her in, whispering a small prayer, before sending Jamie a reassuring smile and leaving the room.

 

It was just the two of them now, Jamie and Claire, as it had been at the beginning. With a last, definitive poke at the fire, Jamie settled in to his vigil.

 

Two hours later, by his estimation, he heard a wheeze from the direction of the bed. Hurriedly laying aside the book he had been attempting to read by moonlight, he hurried to her side, picking up her wrist and feeling for her pulse.

 

It was weak, stuttering every now and then, and that told him she didn’t have long left. Since falling asleep three hours ago, she had not awoken, and somehow he knew that in her dreams, she stood once more before the stones at Craigh na Dun, faced with the reality she could no longer avoid.

 

Jamie rounded the bed to the other side, lifting the blankets and the plaid to slip quietly underneath, gathering her to him as he had done a thousand times before. Her skin was cool to the touch, and instead of equalizing with his own, it remained cold, her heart beginning to fail.

 

Lying there, with an arm beneath her neck and flung out in front of her on the mattress, the other wrapping around her torso, it was easy to pretend for a second that this was like all the times which had gone before.

 

Then that wheeze came again, and all pretence was shattered. He cradled her closer, knowing as he did so the futility of his attempt to warm her.

 

All that needed to be said between them had passed some hours before, sitting on the front steps overlooking Fraser’s Ridge. What could he say to her now – what? How could he describe to her in one solitary moment everything she had done for him?

 

Jamie closed his eyes, tightening his grip on her hand, resting over her heart, counting the beats. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum…_

And then, nothing.

 

For several moments, he did not move. It hardly seemed real to him, feeling that kind, generous heart fall still beneath his hand, his ears straining for the exhale which would never come.

 

Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Randall Fraser was gone.

 

Gone somewhere he could not follow.

 

The only sound in the room, save his own breathing, was that of the sparks in the fire jumping and crackling. As if hearing it from from a great distance, there was a faint, “ _No_ ,” in a voice which scarcely sounded his own.

 

In a sudden fit of grief, he turned her onto her back and shook her gently, begging her through a sudden onslaught of tears to wake up. When did did not, he subsided onto his knees, one limp, cold hand seized between both of his own.

 

“Claire,” he choked out. “ _Claire_ , this can’t be real.”

 

Yet it was, and while his head had accepted that, his heart refused to comply.

 

He remained there, on his knees, watching her helplessly, still holding her hand in his own. Slowly, ever so slowly, her temperature dropped, the veins in her hand turning blue as the blood ceased to pump. In his periphery, Jamie saw the fire start to flicker, burning low, yet he did not move to stoke it again.

 

There was no need.

 

Claire no longer needed the warmth it brought, and he himself felt as though he could never be warm again, after losing her – his light.

 

“ _Mo Sorcha_ ,” he sobbed. “I am a selfish man, but I long for one more day with ye.” Even that would not suffice, he thought, somewhere in the haze of his grief. One day could not atone for the twenty years they had spent apart after Culloden.

 

The fire was long since out, the grey light of dawn casting long shadows across the floor, when at last he moved. He left her on the bed, lying on her back, and turned to lean on the mantelpiece – he could not bring himself to look upon her peaceful face, free of the lines upon her forehead which had materialised in her last years.

 

A sudden rap at the door aroused him from his dreamlike state, and he moved automatically to answer it. When it swung wide, he saw that Brianna and Roger stood on the other side, their expressions full of concern. Upon seeing his face and his defeated stance, Brianna knew.

 

“Oh, Da!” She threw her arms around him, clutching him tight. Somewhere in the depths of his hazy mind, he registered that he was her only living parent now – her sole protector besides Roger.

 

Dimly, he realized that Roger was stepping past him, crossing to the bed where Claire lay and picking up her hand in his own to press a kiss to it. “Thank you,” he whispered, and Jamie knew that he wasn’t just thanking her for Brianna.

 

His daughter released him, and their eyes met – twin catlike gazes, equally filled with grief. “She didn’t go before time,” she said, hoarsely. “Mama lived a good life.”

 

Jamie nodded, cutting his eyes once more to the bed where Claire lay on her back, still and peaceful in death as she had not been in life. “Ye’ll help me, _a leannan_? Help me lay her out?”


End file.
